


End of Orders

by EJGryphon



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-23 12:46:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13788069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EJGryphon/pseuds/EJGryphon
Summary: After the events of Episodes VII and VIII, Rey and Kylo Ren continue to find the Force connecting them. But why? How can they find a resolution to the conflict between them, and between two sides of the war, before it is too late?





	1. Chapter 1

Under the glaring sun, the white stormtroopers’ helmets reflected blindingly. Rows and rows of them stood at attention, awaiting their turn after the TIE fighters swept their laser canons over the battlefield, killing many and spreading panic through the poorly prepared troops of the enemy. At the signal, the troopers began forward; the motley band of insurgents crumpling under their advance.  
  
“Forward,” the general said, calmly, his hands clasped behind his back, his sharp-lined jacket open in front, revealing the badge on his chest that marked his position and rank in the First Order high command.  
  
Grand General Armitage Hux was watching the battle from his command shuttle, hovering above the surface of the planet Hmago in the Outer Rim. It was not a powerful or well-populated world, but anti-First Order sentiment was strong and it made a good example for the rest of the galaxy. It would be easy enough to clear out all the adult males of the three primary species and resettle Hmago as a bastion of the Order; the fact that Hmago’s soil was rich in potassium and nitrates which could be exported to supplement farming on wetter worlds to feed First Order troops was a convenient benefit.  
In the few short months since the death of Supreme Leader Snoke, Hux had undergone quite a rollercoaster. Kylo Ren, that rabid beast, had claimed the throne, and his mysterious and near-total capacity in the Force made a coup … trickier to attempt, though not impossible, Hux knew. That throne, Hux’s by all rights, was so close to his grasp, yet not his. Not yet.  
  
Meanwhile, Kylo Ren – ahem, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren – had proven even more mercurial than Hux would have anticipated. He delivered orders with violent and absolute force and then refused to be present when they were carried out. Today, for example, while Hux oversaw the battle, who knew where Ren was hiding?  
It was only a matter of time until the right moment and circumstance arrived. As he watched the ill-prepared peasants fall below him, he knew it was only a matter of time.  
111111  
Supreme Leader Kylo Ren sat silently in his throne room, on the hard, oversized throne. He hunched over, his elbows on his knees, turning over and over an iron circlet, a gift crafted without his orders by a particularly enthusiastic – and skilled – blacksmith on some distant world. He dropped it on the slick polished floor; it landed with a clang.  
What had he been thinking – Supreme Leader? What did he want with this throne, this crown, this … empire? In truth, he wanted no part of it. The only thing he really wanted, had ever really wanted, was out there somewhere, trying to forget him. She was the only thing he’d ever found that actually, in fact brought him any comfort. And she was gone. Had rejected him and his offer, as surely as he’d feared she would. But how he had hoped …  
  
Galactic conquest; the management of troops, their movements and their care; the governance of worlds already conquered – he had neither heart nor head for any of it. While his mother had been an inspiring leader and a wise public official, she had spent all her energy on that project, with little left over to teach her son how to be like her. Instead, he had chosen to go down the opposite path.  
  
A holomessage alert blinked from the arm of his chair. It was Hux, reporting from the battlefield. He ignored it. The rape of Hmago, despoiling it of its resources and its men, had been Hux’s idea. He’d merely agreed to let him go forward. In truth, all of the conquests since Kylo Ren had taken the throne had been Hux’s idea. That was bad, he knew; it made Ren look weak in the eyes of his Grand General, although none of the other officers ever saw their exchanges.  
  
He leaned in his seat, arching his back as if it were sore. Lightsaber practice certainly gave him a rare opportunity to clear his mind, but he had no one to practice against but a hologram. Without making actual contact with an opponent, without the chance that he’d be bruised or wounded or worse, it all seemed so pointless and bland. He thought again about the night she’d given him this scar; unconsciously he raised his hand to touch its slightly raised surface. She’d stalked him like a beast of prey, stood over him while he lay bleeding in the snow; the strike of her blade had burned like fire, and he’d watched her circling him, deciding whether to finish him. Her face, her eyes that night – they haunted him.  
  
He could see her, almost always, in his periphery. Snoke’s words had been nothing but lies; he hadn’t created the bond they shared but only exploited it, for now he was dead and still Ren could see her, hear her, almost all the time. If anything, it was stronger.  
  
Right now, for instance, she was walking again. It seemed to be just about all she did, aside from looking after her pets and practicing with her lightsaber. She was getting to be quite good at that, he noted, with a bit of perverse pride; the ephemeral holograms she sparred with evidently gave her enough pushback that she was slowly moving from the barbaric chopping of a street brawl to a far more delicate warrior. He would have liked to tell her that, if for a moment he thought she’d appreciate his words.  
  
Neither of them seemed to sleep much, but that was nothing new. But when finally she would drift off, lying in her bed wherever it was she was, sometimes he would whisper her name. “Rey.”  
  
111111  
Some days it was easy to ignore him; some days, it was hard. Today was one of the latter.  
  
On the easy days, he was there, connected to her, but he made just as much of an effort to ignore her as she did to ignore him. She felt him, his emotions, his presence; she even heard his voice and could guess at his actions. But on days like today, when she caught him looking at her, with those eyes … These days were tougher.  
  
Finn had noticed that she wasn’t talking much. No matter how much time he spent fussing over Rose, he still found more to invest in Rey. He’d find her in a corridor here on their darkened space station, where she’d be walking aimlessly, trying to escape him, and try desperately to engage her in conversation. “You hungry?” he’d ask, and try to drag her to one of the mess halls; “How are your little … bird things?” he’d enquire, referring to the porgs she and Chewie had left Ahch-To with. In truth, the porgs were about the only things keeping her together. Feeding them, cleaning their nest boxes, petting and talking to them, gave her a sense of purpose while so much else felt so meaningless and blank.  
  
Occasionally she’d turn back to the books, the Jedi texts, when curiosity finally took hold of her. And she’d get lost in them, in the beautiful ancient chants and poems, and find herself lost in thought as she tried to digest them on her own. And she’d wish again that she had someone to discuss them with. And she’d think of Ben.  
  
He was constantly in the back of her mind, as he was so often on the edge of her sight. The Force was connecting them, that was obvious; Snoke’s lies may have affected her for a moment, but his spells had been broken the moment Ben had sliced him in half, yet their connection remained. Intensified, even. It had grown from a few, unpredictable events on Ahch-To to the near-constant presence of Ben Solo – Kylo Ren, she corrected herself – everywhere she went. She could ignore him but she couldn’t seem to make him go away.  
  
“The General’s looking for you,” Finn said. She was jolted out of her reverie by the sound of his voice behind her. “Let me walk with you.”  
  
This too brought up mixed emotions for Rey. She wanted nothing more than to go to Leia, whose kind and steady presence gave Rey, and everyone else here, so much strength. Leia, who knew more about the Force than she did, who might be able to give her some insight into the meaning of the texts or share with her some new knowledge. Or even just listen to Rey as she puzzled through this mystery she’d found herself a part of, without ever wanting anything to do with it. Leia’s losses were severe: her husband, brother, and childhood friend all gone in a matter of days. Her own health destroyed in so many ways by the attack on the Raddus. Rey wanted very much to be able to take care of Leia as Finn took care of Rose. Leia was perhaps the only person Rey knew who could share in Rey’s sadness; everyone here had lost so much in this fight – too much, but Leia alone shared Rey’s sensitivity to the Force.  
  
But, as was always so, the problem was Ben. She could hear him when he spoke, even though it was never to her, and this was the reason why she withdrew from everyone on the Resistance base: if she could hear him, then surely he could hear her. It was bad enough that he had so much access to her unspoken thoughts, and this part of their connection only seemed to grow as time went on. But the kinds of things she would want to discuss with Finn or with Leia were exactly the kinds of things she needed to hide from Ben.  
  
She’d been summoned, and Finn couldn’t know and wouldn’t understand why she wanted to refuse. So she went.  
  
Rey entered the chamber, which was softly lit. It was an office, more elegant than anything she had really been in before. But it was simple, clean and undecorated. There was nothing showy or pretentious, and nothing that gave away the importance in position of the woman whose office it was.

  


General Organa sat in a high-back chair, her cane held in front of her, its tip on the floor between her feet and its head between her two folded hands. She was dressed simply put elegantly, in an olive-green gown with a high cowl neck. Gold earrings and bracelets were the only decoration, but for the single comb in her long, ornately braided hair. Ray realized that Leia looked older since she seen her last, even in the few weeks she’d been avoiding her. The strain on her body from the destruction of the Raddus combined with the stress of leading this ragtag bunch of resistance fighters was clearly wearing on her. A thought passed through Rey’s mind, too, that Leia no longer had her husband to lean on, and had watched her beloved son tried to kill her beloved brother. No wonder she looked so tired and stretched.

“Well come in,” Leia said. There was no preamble, no pretense of formality. Rey felt again the warmth and love that Leia always exuded. It was what made her such a beloved figure, and it was what made Rey trust her so much.

Rey sat herself on the chair opposite Leia. It was obviously where Leia intended her to sit. It was a chair that matched Leia‘s own, a clear symbol that this was a meeting between friends, not between a soldier and a general. Not that Rey considered herself a soldier, or even a true member of this Resistance. Her role was too conflicted, too fraught, to bear putting on one of those orange and white jumpsuits they’d found in the supply room. 

“Something’s wrong,” Leia said, her brown eyes fixed firmly on Rey. Her chin was tilted down, her brows arched, her gaze intense. Quite frankly, that look reminded Rey of Ben’s.

“No, General,” Rey lied. “I’m fine.”

Leia sighed and sat back in her chair. She looked Rey up and down, evaluating the girl’s posture and figure. Rey knew she looked far too thin, even for her. She’d been eating, thanks to Finn’s constant bothering, but sleep was hard to come by, and practicing with her staff was about the only activity that allowed her mind any rest. 

“Rey, you don’t get to my age without knowing when something’s wrong.” Leia gave her a soft, almost maternal smile. “I may not be a Jedi, but I can tell that there something going on with you.”

Of course she could. This was exactly why Rey had been trying to avoid her. Surely she could read that Rey was unhappy - more than unhappy. That much did not require any familiarity with the Force. Even Rey knew it was obvious. But the cause of her unhappiness- that was something she could not talk about, especially not with Leia.

“Just tell me,” Leia persisted. “Maybe I can help.”

It was tempting. So tempting. Rey glanced around the room, nervously. She listened, reached out with her feelings to see if Ben was with her. For once, he was not. But still Rey could not bring herself to say the words, to name the source of her sleeplessness, her restlessness.

“No, General Organa,” she said, at last. “Really.”  
Leia did not believe her. She was a woman who had lived many lives; more and more these days, she felt like she had lived many lifetimes; she was not old by most standards, but most people did not lead wars and govern galaxies. Most people did not outlive every single person they loved. Most people did not survive open space. Her body was breaking down, and she knew it.  
“I’ve been through almost everything a person can go through, Rey. If you change your mind, I hope you trust me enough to speak with me. In the meantime,” she added, thoughtfully, “stay strong. The galaxy needs you. It needs all of you.”


	2. Chapter 2

Three days later, she was gone. Commander Dameron was there with her in the end, he said. She'd been at peace; she'd spoken only of the future of the Resistance, of her hope for the galaxy to be restored.

As her body was cremated, everyone spoke of her triumphs, her role in the Rebellion and her years of service to the New Republic. Of her willingness to give her last years to building up the Resistance. Some talked about Han, their long marriage, and his charity work.

No one mentioned their years of estrangement, or how she'd sent her only child away because he frightened her. Did anyone even know? Rey did. She'd had no choice but to accept Leia for who she was, of course: war hero, leader of the Resistance. Perhaps even the figure of a mother to admire, when she had practically begged Rey to tell her the secret that pressed so hard upon her. But amidst all this, Leia had made many mistakes.

"I tried," Rey whispered. Tears pooled in her eyes as she watched the flames with the others. It was an insufficiently dignified end for a princess, to be incinerated in the mortuary of a space station like a common soldier. Leia would probably appreciate the irony, she realized, and call it a fitting and honorable way to go. "I tried to fix it. I truly tried."

Those tears did not escape Rose Tico. For her part, she had only known Leia as a figure of the Resistance and in her history books; growing up, Rose had heard the stories about the princess of Alderaan, a world which, like her own, had been destroyed by the Empire – albeit in a more spectacular fashion. The galaxy had been shocked when the first Death Star struck; no one even noticed when Rose's planet was picked clean of anything that made it habitable. But the stories of Leia Organa had kept Rose and Paige alive in those dark days, as they imagined themselves to be not war orphans and refugees, but Rebels on a mission. They'd been shaken to the core when news of Leia's biological parentage had been shouted across every news feed, but meeting the princess – now the general – in person had inspired them again.

Now she stood by at her funeral, watching Rey talk to herself while she wept. "She's not okay," Rose whispered to Finn, indicating his friend.

Finn looked up and over at Rey, who stood alone, tears streaming down her cheeks as she mouthed words only she could hear and wiped at her face with the backs of her hands.

He shook his head, sadly. "She hasn't been."

Rose broke away from him. On this day, for this occasion, she had shed her simple green jumpsuit and instead wore one of the uniforms they'd found in storage on the abandoned Rebel space station. Navy blue, trimmed in gold, with her precious medallion hung round her neck: she felt almost regal, and totally uncomfortable. But for the funeral of Princess Leia, it seemed necessary to do something … more. Rose approached Rey, who was still muttering to herself, and offered her a handkerchief.

"You're taking it hard," Rose observed, stupidly. Why did she always seem to say the worst possible thing? "This won't be the end of the Resistance. We still have her spirit."

Rey looked stricken as she turned her eyes to Rose. She could see then what Finn had meant: Rey looked thin, pale, and unfed. It was more than this funeral and what it meant for their futures; her grieving had started long before Leia's death.

Rey had tried to right the wrongs. She had been so sure that Ben would turn, would come home with her to Leia. She had seen him in her mind's eye, turning back to the light – or so she had thought. The vision they'd shared was no promise of the future, she knew that now. Snoke had infected her, placed false ideas in her head, all to draw her to him for her to be struck down by Kylo Ren. She was a training exercise for his pupil, nothing more. And this was why she couldn't stand to see Ren stalking her wherever she went: she had failed Ben Solo.

Suddenly Rey became aware that she had been staring at Rose for several seconds with red eyes and parted lips. She must think I've gone mad, Rey thought to herself. Perhaps I have.

In the far periphery of her sight she caught a glimpse of Kylo Ren, felt his presence. He did not linger. Did he know what was happening here? Had he felt his mother's lifeforce leaving? Or was it just a coincidence?

Before she could at last speak to Rose, Poe Dameron's voice rose over the crackling of the flames.

"On this sad day," he said, standing a little taller. He was now the senior officer, in command of their small band. "We have one last duty to our Princess. I propose that her ashes be taken to the remains of Alderaan. She should rest with her people."

"Hear, hear," said a voice from the back. The others gave their consent in their own languages and ways.

Poe nodded, glad to have the support of the remnant of the Resistance. "Then we need to assemble a team."

"I'll do it," Rey said, softly. All the eyes in the room turned to her. "I'll do it. Myself."

"Rey," Finn said, his voice tender with concern. "You can't go alone."

She shook her head. He had no idea that she felt alone every minute anyway.

"We can't all go, and I can handle a B-wing on my own." Rey felt resolute, resigned. She did not suggest that she take the Falcon; while she was able to pilot it on her own, someone would invariably volunteer to accompany her, and a copilot was the last thing she wanted for this. The ancient Rebel starfighters they'd found in the space station's hangar had turned out to be perfectly serviceable with a tune-up, and there were far more of them than there were pilots to fly them. "You need every soldier here, and no one needs that old piece of junk. You won't miss us, and I'll be back tomorrow."

She did not mention her other reasons for volunteering, and no one pressed her further.

Rey gathered up a few supplies, mostly food and water; there wasn't much more to her name to pack. She gave Chewie instructions on the porgs and hugged Finn goodbye. Then it was time to receive the urn.

Poe met her in the hangar, a courier droid at his side. He only nodded at her; what words could they exchange at a time like this? She knew that Leia had meant so much to him, that she was more a mentor than a figurehead alone. Her passing had put the responsibility for the Resistance into his hands, and, Rey knew, he wasn't entirely sure he was ready. He wanted to believe he was, but the future of the Resistance was the future of the Galaxy, and it weighed upon him. It must have weighed on Leia, too, though she didn't show it like he did. Then again, reading Poe was for Rey like reading the Jedi texts she kept in her quarters: a bit mysterious but ultimately more straight-forward than she would have anticipated.

The courier droid transported the simple, elegant urn up the ladder with a careful, slow whirring sound, hauling itself up one rung at a time, with Rey and Poe following. Most of the others stood in the hangar, watching it happen, lined up in the best semblance of a ceremony they could manage given the paucity of their numbers.

"May the Force be with you," Poe said at last, as Rey personally stowed the urn. And then he was gone, leaving her to her work. She settled herself in the cockpit and gingerly eased the B-wing up and out, into open space.

"What are you doing?" Ben asked. His tone was flat, blank. Rey continued to manually steer the tiny ship, never looking up at where his image was in her mind.

"Giving you a gift," she replied, after several moments. "I know you know."

He sat there, silent, staring. Not at her, she was glad to note. His emotions, usually so evident and available, were dampened and hidden. In truth, she couldn't even imagine what he was feeling. Her entire life she'd been waiting, waiting. She'd had hope that her parents would come back for her – foolish hope, false hope, but hope. He, on the other hand, had no such luxury. Leia was dead, and they had never spoken again. No reconciliation, and no hope for one in the future. Every time Rey had told herself that someday she'd have the chance to be held by them and loved by them again, it had buoyed her up in the darkest days. If Ben had ever felt that way before, it was gone now. His hope was about to sprinkled into the bleakness of an artificial asteroid field. His image flickered in her mind and was gone.

When at last she dropped the little starfighter out of hyperspace, it took a few moments for her to get her bearings and find a spot where chunks of rocks didn't strike the ship with a metallic thunk every few seconds. She put the ship into lock, keeping it stationary, while she observed the graveyard. All of this was easier with an astromech droid, but BB-8 belonged to Poe and she hadn't wanted Poe on this mission, or anyone else for that matter. Rey unbuckled herself and turned in her chair to check back on the urn in the gunner's seat, where she had laid it and surrounded it with every soft thing she could gather. Now she was stationary, hanging in the dead air, she felt the supreme loneliness closing in around her. This is where her people died, Rey reminded herself. Everyone Leia had known and loved, including her parents, had perished when the Death Star burst their planet like a popped balloon.

After several seconds, Rey sat back down and fired up the engine. She didn't bother to latch her safety belt; it seemed unnecessary to take extra precautions like that. No one would miss her if she never came back from this mission. Slowly, she eased the starfighter toward the abandoned space station Leia herself had had constructed; she found herself, bizarrely, for just an instant, wishing C-3PO were with her to tell the story. He was a worrywart and a nuisance, but he had known and loved Leia as much as anyone – and had known her longer than anybody else in the Resistance. Come to think of it, he hadn't spoken much in the days since Leia's death. She made a mental note to check on him when she got back to Holdo Station.

Slowly, for there was no hurry, she guided the starfighter around the various asteroids which were not really asteroids, hoping – though not able to admit it to herself – that none of these chunks of rock and metal was too recognizable for what it was. She approached the main door and hailed the station. It was much smaller than the temporary base the Resistance now called home, constructed from the remnants of the first Death Star: an attempt to make something good out of something so very, very evil, and a lasting testament to what had happened here. A series of mechanical beeps replied to her hail, and she typed in the old Rebel code Poe had given her. The bay door opened, and she steered the B-wing inside the station's hangar.

As Rey climbed down from the B-wing toward the floor below, she became aware of the pressing, oppressive silence. The courier droid clunked softly as it made its own descent behind her, carrying the urn with Leia's ashes. It was the only sound. There was no one here – no one. The station had been maintained the NR for years, but as the First Order encroached and other matters come to the forefront of everyone's minds, they had withdrawn the staff from the station, leaving it a silent testimony. Fitting, Rey thought, that a dead and silent space station should be sentinel over the Alderannian graveyard.

She walked toward the back of the hangar, the little droid gliding along behind her on its two continuous-track rollers; the door whooshed open and the lights snapped on, ushering her down the white main corridor. The little pin-hole light on a tiny sensor pinned to her shirt glowed blue, indicating as she walked that there were indeed no lifeforms around, just as her initial scan had revealed. She was well and truly alone here.

At last, she came to a room marked "Wardroom," the mess for high-level officers. Well, she was by herself, so didn't that make her the highest-ranking being? With a gentle shush, the doors slid open and she entered. Like the main corridor, it was all white with a single, round table in the center of the room and a dozen crisp chairs around it. The floor was the same polished enamel as the corridor, but along the top of the walls, close to the ceiling, was a band of synthstone sparkling in the light as she moved. A thin layer of dust covered everything in this room, which had not been touched since the station had been evacuated many years before. A slight pang of hunger caught up with her, and Rey wondered if the protein recycler still worked, then decided she didn't want to know what lurked in the abandoned kitchen.

As she suspected, the large door at the far end of the wardroom led to the officers' quarters. It was here, she decided, that she'd spend the night. After a lifetime of sleeping on hard sand, she was getting more accustomed than she liked to admit to the former officer's chamber she inhabited on Holdo Station. The little courier droid rolled up beside her, as if waiting for its orders.

"Go in corner and wait until morning," she instructed it, and it did as she said, powering down and making the silence of the space even more apparent. A dreary place for a dreary task, she decided, as she sat down on the edge of the narrow bed and pulled out a protein biscuit from her pack.


	3. Chapter 3

After a long period of staring at that urn, Rey took it out of its cradle on the droid and set it upright in the middle of the floor, sitting on her knees beside it, reverently. There were various religions on Jakku, most prominently a brotherhood of anchorites who lived in the desert and operated various services for the very poorest; these included orphanages, which she had managed to avoid thanks to the oh-so-kind care of Unkar Plutt. Until she had met Maz Kanata those months ago, she’d never had any need for religion or faith – now she wished she knew some better way to pray. It seemed appropriate at a time like this. A presence materialized near her; she didn’t doubt who it was.

“Tell me a little about her,” Rey said, without taking her eyes away from the urn. He was there with her, on the floor. Or at least to her it seemed that way, like they were together there. 

He was silent for a long time. She actually looked up to see if he was in fact still connected to her. He was dressed in dark colors, as always, but loose untied at the throat. Night clothes, she realized.

“She was very proud,” he said at last. “In the good way.” More silence as he thought, as he imagined her face. “She used to sing me this lullaby when I was little. It was called Mirrorbright, about a moon over Alderaan.” Was that a smile that crossed Ben’s lips? She was quite certain she’d never seen him smile. Sympathy, perhaps even pity, was quickly replacing the prickly feeling of irritation. He continued: “Alderaan never had a moon. But it made her happy to sing it.” 

Rey listened attentively, her eyes never straying from his face. 

“She would have liked this,” he said, shrugging as if to indicate the space outside the station, space that used to be Alderaan.   
His words hit Rey like a speeder crash and her expression changed sharply to fear.

“You know where I am?”

He shrugged again, as if ashamed. He no longer met her gaze.

“Do you know where the others are?”

“Just you.” His voice was soft, childlike, afraid. 

“Well, where are you?”

“Ryloth,” he said without hesitation. She couldn’t conceal her surprise. “You don’t have the firepower to do anything about it,” he said. From someone else, it would have been a painful jab; from Ben Solo, the truth was just the kindest thing he could offer. 

Rey had managed to observe this about him: he never lied to her. Surely from his perspective every word was only truth.  
She wrinkled her nose, thinking about Ryloth. She’d come across more than a few Twi’leks in her lifetime, and she’d never been very positively impressed. 

“Yeah, it’s awful,” Ben said, as if he could hear her thoughts. Of course he could hear her thoughts, or at least sense her emotions. She could sense his. 

And what was inside Ben’s mind? She turned to him her full attention, studying his face. The black eye and deep red scratches he’d borne the last time she had really looked at him had healed; the scar she had given him back on Starkiller had not. Soft black curls framed his face, which now, in grief, was gentle. From the first time she had ever seen him she thought him beautiful. This had never changed.

She watched him sorting through his emotions. In fact, she thought to herself, he looks … like a prince. Of course, he was a prince: son of a princess, grandson of a queen. But he looked like the kind of man other men would follow. The kind of man who could be a leader, if he would try. And she of course could understand what he was feeling. Everyone was gone, and there could be no reconciliation now. She knew how that felt. She had hoped for so many years that her parents would come home, would be with her again, and that she would have the chance to tell them that she forgave them for abandoning her. To tell them that all she wanted was to be with them now. But that day, just as for Ben, would never come.

Two thoughts came to her mind at the same time. The first was that she had compassion for him – pity, even, if such a thing could exist without also feeling contempt for him. No matter what he had done, who he was, she somehow accepted him. To her he had value, value far beyond his sins.

The second was that she … forgave him. Strange, that: she knew so many of the dark details of his life, but that sense of compassion – no, empathy – made it impossible for her to let them go. His friendship – could she call it that? – had to win over her rage. The malignant anger she’d felt, the hurt and the simmering frustration, would get her nowhere. Would only cut off this connection, which at that moment felt very real and very pressing. 

Rey shifted her weight from her knees to her hip, so that she was sitting on the floor of the Falcon beside him on Ryloth. She reached out her hand for his. He was still lost in thought, lost in grief, and he almost jumped when they made contact. She closed her hand around his large long fingers. “You’re not alone,” she reminded him. He wasn’t; she was here, she was moved by his mourning. She felt warm tears overflow her eyes and drip down her cheeks.

Ben had winced at her touch. It was reflexive: he couldn’t remember the last time he had been touched with kindness. Oh, when he was little, Han would toss him in the air, cover Ben’s hands with his own as he taught him to fly a ship, tousle his dark curls; Leia would pull him into her lap to cuddle him, and leave smudges of lipstick on his little baby forehead. But as he grew older, stronger, darker - as the voice in the back of his mind grew louder - they became afraid of him. When Leia had finally sent him off to Luke, Han had refused to take him; she had to go alone, in the Mirrorbright, her official transport, with a New Republic pilot at the helm. When she had hugged him goodbye - was that it? The last time?

Rey should hate him, yet here she was, comforting him. Physically separated though they were, he could feel what she felt: sadness, yes, but also a kind of peace, even contentment. To be with him? He could find hope in that.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” he asked, still so softly. She didn’t move or flinch, as if she had expected the question. Her hand didn’t move from his. “You wanted to. You should have.”

“I wanted to,” she agreed. “I failed you. I failed her. I was …” She thought for a moment, choosing her word. “I was angry.”

“At me,” he finished for her. She didn’t answer, instead sitting quietly, feeling the warmth of his skin in her hand. That did surprise her, as much as she felt grateful for it. He knew where she was, could easily have sent an entire fleet of ships to destroy her tiny Corellian freighter, but he just sat, staring at his mother’s urn.

“I thought you were gone,” she said. Her hand was warm on his; the scent of her skin – its perceptibility a surprise – was clean and soft, like old-fashioned soap. Her eyelashes were stuck together and her eyes slightly rimmed with red. 

Suddenly the sensation of her touch was too much for him and he withdrew his hand from hers. Too much – it was all too much. The emotion from her was, strangely, sadness but understanding. And that, even in the midst of all this, hurt. Everything … hurt.


End file.
